My baby is getting so big. I hope she thinks well on these days of foraging blueberries every spring! I know I will!!

This year has been an unusually wet season here in Alabama and it seems to have been exceptional for the wild blueberries. Every bush was as about as full of blueberries as I have ever seen.

With Memorial Day coming up, I think my Southern Blueberry Pie is in order. I love the flavors of the wild blueberries a little better than the cultivated ones. They seem to be sweeter. They are quite a bit smaller so you have to use more blueberries to have the correct volume in the pie, but it is well worth it. You can find more details about different wild and cultivated varieties on this post.

In the pie crust I use with this pie, I use both cold butter and lard. The butter gives you the rich flavor while the lard gives you the fantastic flakiness that we all deserve. I like to use the lattice crust, but when I am in a hurry, I will just top the pie with the crust and place a pie bird in the middle of the pie to keep the juices from spilling over and to keep my crust nice and flaky.

I just hope I can make this pie fast enough…before the blueberries are mysteriously eaten by 7 little blueberry thieves!

* You can substitute domestic cultivated berries in the pie if wild berries are not in season.

* Brushing the top lattice with heavy cream or an egg and sprinkling raw sugar on the tops of the lattice crust gives it a prettier appearance as well as a nice crunch.

SOUTHERN WILD BLUEBERRY PIE

Blueberry Pie

Ingredients

2homemade pie crusts

5 ½cupsblueberries

1/3cupbrown sugar

1/3cupgranulated sugarplus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling

1teaspooncinnamon

¼cupflourplus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling

1large eggbeaten

1tablespoonheavy cream

Instructions

Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar on the bottom of chilled crust. Pour filling into the crust, follow lattice crust instructions and bake in oven for one hour or until blueberries are bubbly and crust is golden. Serve with ice cream or homemade whipped cream.

Ingredients

Instructions

Place flour and salt into food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse to mix.

Dice butter. Add diced butter and cold shortening to processor.

Add ice water to the mixture down the feed tube with machine running. Pulse machine until dough forms a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Cut dough in half. Roll one of the pieces on a well-floured board rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make sure it does not stick.

Continue rolling until 14 inches in diameter. Fold the dough in half over the rolling pin, place in pie pan. Unfold and mold to pie plate.

If making a double crusted pie, roll remaining half of dough out on a well floured surface. Roll from the center to the edge, turning, flouring, and rolling until you get a disc with the diameter of approximately 12 inches or to desired size. Using a sharp knife, trim the edges of the top crust leaving a ¾ inch overhang under the original pie crust and crimp the edges using your index finger and thumb. Make steam vents by using a sharp knife to cut 4 slits in center of top crust.

If making a lattice crust, roll remaining half of dough into a rectangle about 1/8 inch thick and 8x10 inches. Cut the rectangle lengthwise into 1-inch strips. Make sure to do this on a floured surface so lattice strips do not stick. Place strips about one inch apart oven top of pie. Fold back every other strip half way over itself and place one of the remaining strips perpendicular to the original. Return the strips that had been folded back to their original position. Fold back the alternate strips and place another strip across the unfolded strips. Return strips that are folded back to the original position and repeat by continuing to weave the lattice on top of the pie filling. Roll the overhang under bottom pie crust. Use a sharp knife to trim off the excess. Use your index finger and thumb to pinch dough to make a fluted design.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment

Name *

Email *

Website

Recipe Rating

Sign up for our newsletter today!

There's free goodies waiting for you right now! Subscribe and get them instantly!

Ebook

This is my handbook on all things preservation: from canning, to freezing, to drying. It took years to master these techniques, but now I'm giving it away for free. Why? Because you deserve it, of course!

Product Giveaways

I'm so excited for this one. New subscribers have the best chance to win in my free product giveaways! It's time for me to share the love, and who better to share it with than my subscribers? You guys come first!

Coupon Codes

Subscribers get first dibs on all my juiciest product discounts. When I have a new coupon code to share, you guys will hear about it first! All you have to do is subscribe and stay subscribed—we get these pretty often!